Work Text:
May 2022
Astrid hasn’t been okay for a while. Her friends know about her anxiety, and her anger issues, and her maybe-autism, and maybe the first two are the reason she’s never been able to be truly okay. But Hiccup can see she’s been deteriorating recently, and it shows .
Really, he wonders how it’s not glaringly obvious to anyone but him, how everyone Astrid walks past misses the stressed look in her eyes and the shadows lining them. The sight becomes familiar, a fleeting glance in the crowded corridors (because he doesn’t see her outside school anymore, goddammit) he knows better than the back of his hand.
It’s when Monday rolls around for the hundredth time when he doesn’t see her at all, and he really begins to worry.
He asks Heather, who lies across three chairs, her earbuds in, fast asleep. Feeling horrible for what he was about to do, he shakes her awake, and she snaps her head up, blinking herself awake.
“Wha- oh hey, Hiccup.” She grins, though it doesn’t reach her eyes. It’s now he notices the bulge under her jumper in the shape of a hot water bottle. It’s her time of the month; she must be exhausted from the accompanying pains.
“Have you seen Astrid?”
“No, she hasn’t texted me in ages,” she mumbles.
“Okay. You go back to sleep. You need your rest.” She nods, laying her head back down on her rucksack she was using as a chair.
Hiccup continues searching, asking everyone he knows, and they all come up with the same answer. No.
Now he’s really worried. Astrid never gets sick -she says so herself- so it’s probably family related. But even then, she’d tell someone... right?
He walks to the edge of the school premises, and dials her number once. Twice. Three times. Then he dials it again, over and over, even though he knows what will come up: voicemail.
Eventually, he realises he has Astrid’s aunt’s phone number saved, and he rings that. To his relief, she picks up.
“Hi Mrs Herrera-Sosa,” he says. “Is Astrid at home today?”
A silence passes that grows more anxiety-inducing by the second. “Um, no. I thought she took the bus into school.”
Hiccup thinks quick. “Actually, I remembered she had a meeting today. She’s in.”
“Okay, glad I could help,” she says, and hangs up.
He feels horrible for lying to her, he really does. But if Astrid’s not at home or school, it means no one knows where she is, and he needs to find her ASAP.
So he does something he’s never done. He skips school.
He distinctly remembers a day when he was younger, on his first day of Berk High, where Dagur took him, Heather, and their friend group to the corner of the sports field where the fencing stretched two metres above their head. He pushed a crop of bushes aside to reveal a patch where two fence posts were sawed off two feet above the bottom, leaving a hole you could crawl through.
“ Now listen, I made this in my high school days to skip easier, but I don’t want you using this unless you have to, ” he’d said sternly. “ And I mean it: emergencies only. And come to my place if you need help dealing with it. ”
Hiccup finds the patch easily, having used it himself on more than one occasion. He shoves the bushes aside, and checks for anyone who might be watching. There is none. Scraping his elbows, he crawls through the hole, and emerges the other side in an alleyway. From there, he makes his way down the side of the school to the back road to town.
It occurs to him he’s out here alone without telling anyone. Suddenly, he feels a pang of anxiety rise in his chest at being alone out here, but adrenaline quickly squashes it.
For Astrid. She’s in trouble, he repeated to himself like a mantra as he walked towards the town centre.
He starts at the bus stop, resting his leg for a moment, and branches out from there in a misshapen circle: dipping into shops and weaving through car parks. The sun’s hot and heavy on his face, slowly toasting his skin underneath his jumper. For Astrid .
It’s an hour and a half before he covers the whole shopping district, and even then he hasn’t found her. It occurs suddenly that Berk, despite being a small town, is still a whole town . And she could be moving around. She’s far faster than him; she could be anywhere by now, for all Hiccup knows.
I can’t stop , he thinks. But every step is getting harder and harder to take.
He makes it all the way to the end of the street before he has to sit down, collapsing gratefully onto the bench. It’s now he realises it’s nearing mid morning, and the school has definitely noticed his absence.
On cue, his phone pings with a notification from the group chat eloquently titled: RUFFNUT AND TUFFNUT STOP TAKING MY SOCKS thanks to Fishlegs.
Snotlout: HICCUP WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU??
Heather: i’m not joking the school is looking for you
Heather: whatever you need to do, get your head out of your ass and do it fast
Blunt as ever, Heather, Hiccup thinks to himself, swiping the texts away. His lock screen is mockingly blank, an old selfie of him, Astrid and Heather going rollerskating when they were fifteen or something. He’s desperately clutching to Astrid -who stands easily- and the skating bar for dear life, while Heather stands behind him making bunny ears and grinning wildly. It’s blurred and Heather put some kind of filter on it to make it look like an action shot. The photo fills him with warmth. He still remembers the nauseating feeling of rolling around on his wobbly legs, gripping Astrid’s hand as she helped him around-
Astrid. Oh Gods . He bolts up from the bench, pacing back and forth. Too much and not enough energy is inside him to be productive, and he has to find her, or- or...
He’s not sure. All he knows is something’s wrong and that may be the one certain thing left.
So he has to help her.
Tuffnut: hiccup i can see ur in town wtf are u doing??
He groans aloud, resisting the urge to kick a nearby trash can.
Hiccup: Does that really matter right now?!
It’s only after he’s pressed send that something clicks.
Hiccup: wait. how do you know where i am??
Tuffnut: easy. find your friends app. i’ve got all of us saved.
A kick of hope hits Hiccup in the heart.
Hiccup: do you have astrid saved?
Tuffnut: yeah, hang on
Hiccup stares at his phone, his heart thudding in anticipation. What is taking Tuffnut so long?
Finally, a text comes through with a screenshot of a bubble with Astrid’s profile-
“The bus stop? ” Hiccup yells aloud. He definitely checked there.
May as well check again, it’s the only lead I’ve got. Tightening his bag over his shoulders, he continues on to the bus stop.
If he was not scanning his surroundings the whole way there, was he not looking for anything remotely resembling his girlfriend, he would’ve missed the blue hair ribbon discarded outside the alleyway.
His gentle fingers pick it up, rubbing the satiny fabric between his fingers, and remembers the sight of it on the end of her plait. It was her mother’s before her’s, the only thing of her deceased parents’ she’d been allowed to keep.
He frowns. She’d never let this fall out. He pockets it and continues looking.
“Astrid?” Carefully, he walks into the alleyway, his foot and prosthetic crunching on the dried leaves. He turns around a tip, and-
“ Astrid! Oh my God,” he gasps in relief, bending down to her. She removes her head from the safety of her arms just for long enough to see him- and flinches.
Taken aback, Hiccup carefully steps away, crouching two or so feet away from her.
“It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s just me.” He raises his hands where she can see them, and keeps his voice low. “I’m here for you, Astrid. Whatever’s happening, I promise , I won’t think any less of you.”
She finally unfurls her neck to meet his eyes, and a cruelly selfish part of Hiccup wishes she hadn’t. Her cheeks are streaked with tears coming from red-rimmed, terrified eyes. Her hair’s a mess, and her lips are quivering with the effort it takes her not to cry. Hiccup would be lying if he said it doesn’t hurt to see her like this. She’s Fearless Astrid Hofferson, broken by nothing and no one.
Even if her apparent mental state has been spiralling longer than either of them are willing to admit.
“What happened, Astrid?” Hiccup tries to catch her eye, and she ducks her head away. He takes the hint and backs off. Eye contact is awkward, especially when someone is in such a fragile state.
Her hands shaking, she signs the words ‘can’t speak’ .
“Oh.” Hiccup sighs. “Are you having a verbal shutdown?” Astrid nods, biting her lip as if ashamed. “That’s fine- do you think you can type?”
She nods, pulling out her phone. When Hiccup scoots a little closer to her -less than one foot bridging the gap now- she doesn’t flinch away.
Her message is a short one, even though it takes a while to type it.
Astrid: i don’t know what happened. i just got off the bus and everything was so much more than usual. you know how things are when it’s too much-ish?
Hiccup grins to himself as he replies.
Hiccup: yeah. i know exactly what you mean.
Astrid gives her phone a small smile.
Astrid: yeah, it was like that. but it was worse today. i don’t know why. but i just couldn’t think straight and i was so tired and scared, and i knew i couldn’t go to school today. i couldn’t face the people and the pressure.
Pressure. That last word makes Hiccup stop short. He knows Astrid almost inside and out, down to the little things like how her nose crinkles when she laughs, and her ears go red when she’s angry. But he doesn’t know anything about pressure.
Hiccup: what pressure were you under?
Astrid’s hands shake so much she drops her phone, and clamps her hand over her ears. Hiccup’s heart drops into his foot.
“Hey- hey, woah, Ast, it’s me- okay, just me. Please don’t do that,” he says, gently trying to pry her hands from her ears. “Trust me. That only stresses you more long term. Here-” he reaches into his bag, thankful he’s always over prepared for everything that could ever happen “-I’ve got noise cancelling headphones. They’re red, not blue, which isn’t exactly your colour -not that it wouldn’t suit you, or anything- but I just think it would help... you know.”
She gratefully takes them from his outstretched hands and pulls them over her ears. Her hand moves to her lips in the sign ‘thank you’ and moves her outstretched down to him. He takes the invitation and clasps her clammy fingers in both hands like a priceless treasure.
“You don’t have to tell me about anything you don’t want to right now, okay?” Hiccup smiles softly at her. “But promise me you will try to. Not now, not even today. But some day.”
Through her lips wobble, she smiles gratefully. This time, unlike all the other times in the past months, it reaches her tired eyes.
Hiccup kisses her forehead, and helps her to her feet. “Come on. We need some rest, my dear.”
It’s little over an hour in the time it takes them to get to Dagur’s, for Hiccup to briefly explain the situation, and to get comfortable in the darkness of Hiccup’s room. Astrid lies on Hiccup’s chest, her head rising and falling with his steady breathing. His arms curl around her, one hand rubbing her back in perpetual motion.
And it’s the certainty of his fingers tracing circles into her skin, the way it doesn’t change, that -with all the madness happening around her- makes her feel only just brave enough to speak.
She snuggles closer to him, and whispers “I’m tired.”
“Get some rest. When we wake up, we can start the day over, okay?”
She nods into his ribcage. “Okay.”
A new start sounds good.